Chapter 47
Sebastian made it as far as Gray’s Inn before the throngs of people descending on Spa Fields forced him to abandon the curricle in Giles’s care and proceed on foot.
The sky overhead was a dull grayish white, the air cool and damp and heavy with the scents of coal smoke and fermenting hops from the nearby brewery.
But the streets rang with a cheerful, fair-like atmosphere, the laughing, shouting groups of children and women in their Sunday best mingling with throngs of apprentices off for “Saint Monday.” And because it had been a hanging day, many of those who’d gathered at the Old Bailey to see four men “turned off”—two for the crime of stealing handkerchiefs—were now joining the crowds making their way up the hill toward Clerkenwell.
Even before he reached the top of Coppice Row, Sebastian could hear the haunting wail of a bagpipe and the steady beating of a drum, see the gaily colored pendants fluttering from rows of stalls selling everything from gingerbread and hot chestnuts to bottled ale and ginger beer.
Keeping an eye out for Damion Pitcairn, Sebastian worked his way across the stretches of rolling, open fields now crowded with tens of thousands of tradesmen, small shopkeepers, market women, craftsmen, costermongers, and apprentices.
Dozens of banners rippled in the breeze, proclaiming everything from Purity of Elections and Religious Liberty to Feed the Hungry.
At the crest of the hill stood the early eighteenth-century, country-style tavern known as Merlin’s Cave overlooking the millpond of the New River Head.
It was from one of the public house’s upper windows that the orator Henry Hunt had addressed the crowds at the first Spa Fields meeting in November, and it was where he was supposed to speak again today.
But it was now well past the time when Hunt was scheduled to have arrived, and people were still milling around, waving their banners and waiting.
Damion Pitcairn was nowhere in sight.
Frustrated, Sebastian swung around, his attention drawn to a wagon parked partway down the hill.
A simple high-wheeled farm wagon with a flat bed, it was hung with half a dozen tricolor flags, the blue, white, and red of revolutionary France replaced here by stripes of white, green, and red, representing England, Ireland, and Scotland.
As Sebastian watched, a young man in a black coat and waistcoat, drab breeches, and long gaiters leapt up onto the wagon bed.
Dark haired, with a pale face and slight frame, he couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty and looked half-drunk, his words slurring slightly as he shouted, “Friends and countrymen! Lend me your ears!”
A portly shopkeeper to Sebastian’s right recognized the borrowing from Shakespeare and smiled.
But the nod to Marc Antony’s famous speech eluded most of the men gathered in this part of the field, for these were the most desperate of the struggling poor: soldiers in tattered remnants of fading uniforms; gaunt laborers cast adrift by the recent ending of the great project to build the Regent’s New Canal; clusters of ragged, unemployed sailors up from Wapping.
Their faces earnest and intent, they now pressed forward to hear better.
“These are historically wretched times!” shouted the man on the wagon. “We live in a nation in which a few hundred thousand wallow in the lap of great luxury while millions face the threat of starvation. Starvation!”
An approving murmur of “Hear! Hear!” rippled through the crowd.
The orator continued, “Has there been a day since the time of the Norman conquest when the people of England were not oppressed by the descendants of those foreign invaders? They came here, made themselves our masters, stole our land, and claimed it as theirs. For eight hundred years they’ve kept their feet on our necks.
They’ve denied us any say in our own governance.
They’ve forced us to pay their ruinous taxes and tariffs. And for what? For what?”
The cries of “Hear, hear!” were louder this time.
“Wasn’t expecting to see you today,” said a familiar voice at Sebastian’s elbow. “A bit out of place, aren’t you?”
Turning, he found himself looking into the plump, serious face of coffeehouse keeper Adam York.
Sebastian let his gaze drift over the crowded hillside. “It looks peaceful.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
Sebastian nodded to the grim walls of Cold Bath Fields Prison rising on the western edge of the packed hillside.
“You know Sir Nathaniel Conant and his nasty little chief clerk are already set up there, ready to bring charges of treason against anyone and everyone they can—particularly those involved in organizing today’s meeting? ”
“I don’t see anyone rioting or causing trouble, do you?”
“Not yet,” said Sebastian, his gaze going back to the man on the wagon. “Who is he?”
“Him? That’s James Watson. He and his da are apothecaries—and more than half-mad, the both of them, if you ask me.”
Sebastian nodded to a dumpy thirty-year-old man who had now appeared beside one of the wagon’s massive rear wheels. It was John Castle. “You know him?”
“Castle? He and Watson are both on the organizing committee. Why?”
“Castle works for Bow Street.”
York sucked in a quick breath that hissed through his teeth. “You’re certain?”
“Yes. And I suspect he’s not the only agent Bow Street has planted in this crowd.
” Sebastian let his gaze drift over the teeming fields.
“The government has thousands of Hussars, Life Guards, and specially sworn-in constables stationed from here to the river. What do you think they’re expecting to happen? ”
On the wagon bed, the half-drunk, half-mad young apothecary was shouting, “A million pounds! A million pounds a year of our money he takes for his waistcoats and jewels, his palaces and women. And what has he ever done for us besides send us off to fight and die in a war that meant nothing to us? How much longer must this be endured?”
“Hear, hear,” bellowed his audience.
“Hunt’s finally arrived,” said York quietly. “Thank God.”
Twisting around to look back up the hill, Sebastian could see the famous, tall, elegantly dressed man standing on the front steps of Merlin’s Cave, bowing and waving to the cheering crowds surging toward him.
But the knot of ragged sailors, soldiers, and laborers gathered around the farm wagon were still focused on the young apothecary.
As if aware of Hunt’s arrival, John Castle seized one of the flags from the wagon and began waving it back and forth above his head.
“Are you ready to do something about it?” shouted Castle, his booming voice ringing out over the cheering coming from Merlin’s Cave at the top of the hill. “It’s time, isn’t it? Will you follow me?”
“Yes!” roared the crowd.
“There they go,” said Sebastian as the young apothecary seized another of the flags and leapt off the wagon to join his cheering audience.
“Bloody fools,” muttered Adam York. “At least not many are following them. There must be thirty or forty thousand people here today, with only a few hundred following those two idiots.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Sebastian as they watched the cockade-waving band charge down the hill toward St. John Street.
“It’s that lot who’ll be remembered—and used to justify whatever repressive policies the government is planning to impose.
” He brought his gaze back to the coffeehouse keeper beside him. “Were you on the planning committee?”
York nodded silently, his face troubled.
“And Damion Pitcairn? Was he?”
“Aye. Don’t understand why he’s not here. Haven’t seen him or Sasha. It’s odd, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” said Sebastian, aware of a hollowness that yawned deep in his gut. “It’s odd.”
Sebastian left Spa Fields soon after that, walking through empty, deceptively quiet streets as he followed the curve of Baynes Row down to Gray’s Inn Lane.
He had almost reached the intersection with King’s Road when he spotted a familiar slender figure dressed in gray Wellington trousers and a black French-cut coat walking swiftly with her head down, her eyes darting cautiously this way and that as she crossed the lane toward Liquorpond Street.
His curiosity aroused, Sebastian trailed Pitcairn’s sister along Liquorpond to an ancient, mean lane that wound back up toward Mount Pleasant. Still following at a discreet distance, he watched her duck into a narrow passage leading to a squalid, foul-smelling court.
The court was utterly deserted, its wet, muddy cobbles strewn with broken glass and rubbish and lined on three sides by boarded-up shops and dingy brick warehouses with barred windows.
But marooned on the northern side of the court stood a small, wretched cottage, a relic of a vanished time before the spreading city had swallowed its pastureland and tilled fields.
Once, the cottage had been whitewashed, with a blue-painted wooden door and cheerful yellow shutters.
Now its walls were grimy and soot-stained, the paint on the old warped door faded and peeling, its shutters broken and hanging at drunken angles.
The high brick wall of one of the warehouses butted up against the cottage on one side, looming over it and hemming it in.
But an old fieldstone lean-to still survived on the other side, collapsing slowly into ruin.
Keeping his back pressed against the wall of the dark passage, Sebastian watched Sasha cross the court to knock on the cottage’s warped wooden door.
There was no answer.
She knocked again, her features tense as she threw a quick, wary glance around the empty court.
A minute passed. Two. When there was still no answer, she reached out to press the latch, a shadow of surprise crossing her face as the door swung inward perhaps a foot and then stopped.
“Hullo?” she called.
Silence.
Throwing another quick look around, she hesitated, then pushed the door open wider and stepped inside.
“Damion?” Sebastian heard her call.
Then she closed the door behind her.